On 19 May 2010, at 20:00, AES wrote:
> In article <hstp6f$mbs$1 at smc.vnet.net>,
> Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl> wrote:
>
>> On 18 May 2010, at 15:01, AES wrote:
>>
>>>>
>>>> [However}, there seems to have been no further
>>>> development of Textures in the last few years, ...
>>>
>>> Textures, sadly, appears to be dead.
>>
>>
>> Both of these assertions are not true (or at least not unquestionably so):
>>
>> http://www.bluesky.com/news/220b.html
>>
>> Andrzej Kozlowski
>
> Maybe (hopefully) not true; I did say "seems to be . . . "..
>
> But note the dates of the beta (only) versions mentioned on that page:
>
> 2.2.0b Copyright 2008
>
> 2.2.0b5 25 Dec 2007
>
> 2.2.0b12 10 Sept 09
>
> And the page itself -- quite crudely done -- has hardly changed in all
> that time.
>
> Not an encouraging pace of development, for something that's going to
> have to be a very sophisticated piece of software to be successful. I
> monitored the page monthly for quite a while; eventually gave up on
> looking at it maybe a year ago.
>
I agree that this is weird, in fact perhaps the strangest case of this kind I have come across.
On the one hand: to be commercially viable (at least at the sort of price they seem to want to charge for it) Textures will have to be a lot better than programs like Texshop or Lyx, which are free. A this point it isn't even as good as the free alternatives.
On the other hand, someone is clearly continuing to work on it, albeit slowly. They are even trying to charge for the latest beta: only version 2.2.0b5 is free to classic Textures owners (like myself). That version is obviously not good enough to compete with TexShop.
What makes it even more weird is that, if I remember correctly, Richard Koch, the author of TexShop, offered free use of his program to the Textures developers but his offer was ignored. And the text editor is the weakest part of Textures right now.
It is hard to imagine that anyone would be wasting so much time developing a program of this kind while thinking of the situation as essentially hopeless. It's equally hard to imagine that the developers do not realise the magnitude of the task facing them. One is tempted to think that they really must have something up their sleeve. But if they do they are certainly good at keeping secrets...
Andrzej Kozlowski